


Coincidence

by engine



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, canon typical magic, different paths leading to the same destination, pre-cdth and essentially compliant with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25186057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engine/pseuds/engine
Summary: There's a new psychic working at the Fairy Markets.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 12
Kudos: 180





	Coincidence

**Author's Note:**

> i drive past a sign that just says "PSYCHIC" with a phone number when i go to work, which just enables the "yes, and" game i play with myself about fanfic prompts. i am deeply obsessed with a world where adam and blue grew up as weird psychic friends in public school. this was my attempt at writing a version of that without rewriting the entire series. enjoy!

_Berlin, Germany (May)—_

“Who’s that?” Declan asked, pausing as they walked past an open door.

Normally, Ronan didn’t bring Declan along on his trips to the Fairy Markets anymore—a particularly disastrous one in the bowels of a Manhattan night club had made clear that the brothers worked better apart—but Berlin was one of Niall’s old haunts, and that meant Declan had the contacts. Unfortunately. Ronan hated playing second fiddle to Declan when _he_ was the one making these deals possible, especially since everyone they met loved pointing out how _similar_ they were, how _much_ like Niall they looked. At least Declan also seemed displeased by this arrangement, usually trying to get them in and out as fast as possible, which is why it was surprising that anything would be enough to distract him. 

Ronan paused a step ahead, ducking back to see what Declan was looking at. The doorway led into a small, dim room, lit mostly by flickering candlelight. Other than the candles, nothing felt particularly otherworldly about it: it was set up like an office, matching the general decor of the intensely modern hotel they were currently occupying, with a chair that didn’t look particularly comfortable placed in front of a desk. A small group of people had clustered inside, sitting on the two extra sofas pushed against the walls. A woman was sitting in that single, uncomfortable chair, her hands clasped tightly on her lap, hair pulled up in a messy bun, staring down at the spread of tarot cards before her. And behind the desk—

“Fuck if I know,” Ronan said.

Behind the desk was a young man holding the rest of the cards, looking at the woman in front of him. He was speaking, but from this distance Ronan couldn’t hear the words. It was hard to tell his age; something about his features, thin and gaunt and fine, coupled with his ashy blond hair, made him seem _beyond_ age.

He was also beautiful.

“Wasn’t there another psychic?” Declan said, as if Ronan ever paid attention to the psychics at these things. Well, maybe he would’ve paid attention if they’d all looked like this. “He looks kind of familiar.”

The woman heaved out a long sigh as the man finished talking, curling forward on herself as if what he’d said was a physical weight on her shoulders. Ronan watched his hands as he carefully picked up the cards, sliding them on top of his deck. Ronan thought he could watch those hands for a very long time. 

Finally, when all the cards were safely back in the deck, the woman pushed her chair back. She stood up, straightening her shoulders, as if accepting whatever was to come in her future, and stepped away to let the next visitor take her place. 

And the man looked up. Not to the next guest, an older man with a shaved head and plaid shirt, but instead directly at Ronan. Something in his expression relaxed, one eyebrow quirking upwards, a slight smile beginning to form. It made him look immediately younger, close to Ronan’s age, no longer unknowable with whatever psychic bullshit he was peddling. He _did_ look a little familiar, like Declan said, though Ronan was sure he hadn’t seen him before. He’d have remembered someone who looked like this. 

The seconds stretched, seeming much longer than they should; Ronan catalogued the pale eyebrows, the assessing gaze, the way he tucked his hair back behind his ear. Then, as the next guest took a seat, the young man looked away, his smile disappearing back behind a calm and elegant facade. 

“No clue,” Ronan said, finally answering Declan’s question. He dragged his gaze from where the young man was shuffling his tarot cards with effort. He didn’t have the time or luxury of lingering over a beautiful psychic. He shouldn’t want to do that anyway.

Declan shrugged as they walked away, a careless gesture that they’d both picked up from their father. It didn’t even wrinkle his suit. “Just seems interesting that there’s a new psychic,” he said. “Be careful.”

Ronan thought of those hands carefully holding the cards, and, much to his annoyance, couldn’t help but agree. 

_Kyoto, Japan (July)—_

“Thank you as always, Mr. Lynch,” said the intermediary, a handsome, middle aged Japanese man named Yamaguchi, who had a visible tattoo curling down his wrists when his sleeves shifted. “We will be in touch the next time you are in town.”

Ronan had never met his boss—and hopefully never would—but as far as Ronan could tell, the leader of the Tojo Clan was more than happy to pay, no questions asked, for whatever dream shit he could keep locked up in his manor far from prying eyes. That made him the ideal collector in comparison to some of the people Ronan had dealt with. The less eyes on Ronan’s dreams the better.

“I’ll let you know,” Ronan said as they left the small private room the Tojos had reserved just for this purpose. The dream object was tucked safely in Yamaguchi’s coat, and they turned down the hall in different directions. No doubt more of the Tojo were waiting elsewhere in the depths of the inn.

He was halfway to the exit when the door he was walking past slid open, and Ronan found himself looking at the beautiful psychic from Berlin.

“Oh,” the young man said, his pale eyebrows raised in surprise. They stared at each other for a moment, before he stepped back from the screen door. “Would you like to come in?”

Ronan frowned. The room was set up much like the one in Berlin, but the far wall was entirely glass with a view of the gardens, bathing everything in moonlight. No one was inside, and no tarot cards were visible. One part of Ronan told him to keep walking, to leave the inn, go back to his hotel by the airport until his flight the next morning. Psychics were either the worst kind of con artist, or they were people with access to far more information than he wanted to give. 

He stepped inside. 

“I was leaving,” Ronan said as the young man closed the door behind them. 

“Technically, I was too,” he said, then held out a hand. “I’m Adam.”

“Ronan,” Ronan said, shaking Adam’s hand, surprised by the calluses there. Someone only got calluses like that from work—Ronan had some of his own from working around the Barns—and he wondered who Adam _really_ was, outside of the Market. 

“Well, Ronan,” Adam said. “Nice to finally meet you.” He held onto Ronan’s hand for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary before stepping back, leaning against the edge of the desk. One hand gripped his other wrist, and he smiled a bit, the same small, secretive one Ronan had seen in Berlin.

“‘Finally’?” Ronan asked, stepping further into the room after him. He put his hands in his pockets, slightly on edge, though Ronan wasn’t sure, exactly, what explained his tension. There were multiple options, none of which Declan would approve of. 

Adam tapped his fingers against his own wrist, thoughtful. “You left an impression.”

Ronan didn’t say anything for a moment, and leaned against the desk next to him. It creaked a little, loud in the quiet room. None of the noise of the Market made it through the walls, despite many of them being paper screens—handy magic that Ronan didn’t understand—and the privacy made everything feel infinitely more intimate. 

“What kind of impression?” he asked, watching Adam’s expression carefully. 

“Not a psychic one. Though I could do a reading for you, if you’re curious,” Adam said, a full smile breaking across his face. It was a good look for him. “At a discount, even.”

“Oh, a _discount_ ,” Ronan said. “How fucking _noble_ of you.”

“This _is_ my job,” Adam replied, and now the amusement in his voice was obvious. “But I’ll make an exception. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll even be honest about recognizing you.”

Ronan blinked. Adam hadn’t _seemed_ to know who he was, or at least not _what_ he was, when they’d first started talking. 

“Henrietta’s not a big place,” Adam said, the barest hint of a rural Virginian accent slipping into his vowels as he spoke. Ronan stared at him. “And I think just about everyone saw you racing that car around town at some point or another.”

“Wait, what?” Ronan stared at him some more, which wasn’t exactly a hardship, but shock superseded his ability to really enjoy Adam’s face. “You know me from _Henrietta_?”

Adam looked away, tucking his hair behind his ear, a sure sign of embarrassment. “I worked at Boyd’s garage after school, when I wasn’t doing…” He trailed off, gesturing back towards the rest of the market—psychic stuff, Ronan assumed. “Saw a lot of raven boys’ cars while working there, but never yours. Except one night, about a year and a half ago. Not long before my birthday, which is why I remember.” 

Coincidence.

He looked sidelong at Ronan, and Ronan felt his heart rate kick up in his chest for at least two different reasons. “I was biking home after a shift. You were squared up against that asshole Kavinsky at a stoplight. And then you just,” he paused, making a forward motion with one hand. “Smoked him. Never thought a BMW could accelerate off a stop like that. Like I said, you left an impression.” He shrugged. “And then one day I stopped seeing your car around town. Didn’t realize you were _here_.”

Ronan would have liked to say he was careful with his car, and that was the reason why he never needed to bring it into the shop, but that would’ve been a lie, and he didn’t like to lie if he could help it. “I dropped out,” he said. “I had better things to do.”

“Magical black markets hardly seem better,” Adam said, something bitter slipping into his voice. His accent was more apparent now, and Ronan couldn’t help wondering if it was on purpose, and for what reason. “I didn’t really have a choice. But you had Aglionby. That gets you places.”

There had been a time when Ronan hadn’t thought of this as his only path, or even a path for himself at all. But that had been before Niall was killed, before he’d discovered the body, before he’d realized what his dreaming could do. Before he’d realized at least some facets of who his father really was. By that point, Declan could only hold back Niall’s clients for so much longer as the stash of dreams Niall left behind slowly but surely dwindled. As there was no way Ronan would—or could—stop dreaming, the answer to their problems seemed obvious.

“Not if you’re me it doesn’t,” Ronan said. 

He wasn’t sure what his expression looked like beyond his usual scowl, but Adam was watching him closely. It didn’t feel magical, didn’t have the distance he’d seen in Adam’s gaze back during that reading in Berlin, but Ronan still felt like Adam was seeing things he normally would’ve preferred to keep hidden. There was something, though, about Adam, beyond the attraction, that made Ronan… unsure. Like it might be okay for Adam to know these things, even though they’d only just met. 

“I should go,” Ronan said, like a fucking coward.

“I won’t stop you,” Adam said. He smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes: they were still focused, curious, too sharp by half. But he didn’t push, and Ronan didn’t offer anything else. 

He felt Adam’s eyes on him the entire way out. 

_London, England (September)—_

Despite the presence of Declan, Ronan always enjoyed the London Market. The open courtyard was lined with stalls, the supernatural version of Covent Garden, with wooden planks and suspended bridges spanning the different levels for easy—if precarious—access. It felt a bit like his dreams, all the whimsy and the promise of danger beneath a veneer of respectability. It was easier to get lost in the crowd too, when things weren’t isolated in hotel rooms, hidden from prying eyes. _This_ Market was watched carefully, its rules enforced with an iron fist. That was also something Ronan could respect. Not for the first time, Ronan thought of how much Gansey would love this place.

“It’s like they can smell the Irish on us,” Declan muttered, sounding annoyed despite his perfectly bland expression. “How many dirty looks have we gotten?”

“Might be because you look like a narc,” Ronan said. He shoved his hands in his pockets as they made their way upstairs, glancing around. “If I fake Dad’s accent, you think they’d leave me alone?”

“That,” Declan said, shooting a judgmental look at Ronan, “would probably make this worse.”

The second floor was quieter than the ground level, just as many vendors but less buyers, with more personalized attention. It also meant that, as they turned the corner towards the third floor stairs, it was easy to spot Adam, perched on the edge of the small, round table he’d set up to read fortunes, already looking in their direction. Ronan faltered; Adam smiled.

“Do you need me for this?” Ronan asked, just as Declan reached the stairs. “It’s your contact anyway.”

Declan’s eyebrows pulled together for a moment, before he turned to look in the direction Ronan was looking. Adam gave him a little wave. Declan frowned, looking back to Ronan with his most unimpressed expression.

“Jesus, Ronan,” he said, tugging at the already perfectly unwrinkled lapels of his coat, a nervous tic that made Ronan roll his eyes. “The psychic? Are you serious?”

“No idea what you’re talking about. Catch.” Ronan tossed over the small package he’d been carrying, and Declan caught it, still looking like he’d sucked on a lemon. He clutched it against his chest as Ronan walked past, but he had an appointment, and just as Ronan guessed he would, he went up the stairs instead of following.

Adam had his eyebrows raised, once again clearly curious; Ronan’s suspicions about Adam’s observation skills only increased.

“I was on a break and saw you come in,” Adam said. “Brother?”

“Older,” Ronan said. “Avoid at all costs.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Do you still have that BMW, by the way?”

Ronan blinked twice, then smiled, just one side of his mouth curling up, his sharpest smirk. “Why? Is it haunting you?”

“Something like that,” Adam said, tilting his head.

For most of the year, the BMW sat in the garage of Declan’s townhouse collecting dust. Despite the protections Ronan had dreamed up to surround the Barns, he couldn’t bring himself to leave it there when he was traveling, and he seemed to be traveling as much as he was dreaming, these days. Driving it down the highway back to Singer’s Falls was a special kind of pleasure, but he hadn’t driven it all the way into Henrietta proper since he’d dropped out. Not even to attend Gansey’s graduation.

“It was my dad’s,” he said, voice a bit quieter. Too many people in this sort of place could extrapolate about a car driven by Niall Lynch. “I’m never getting rid of it.”

Once again, Adam’s eyes narrowed a bit, too observant, too curious, but he didn’t ask for more details, or clarification. Certainly if he’d wanted to find out about Ronan’s father it wouldn’t have been hard, in a place like this. But he seemed content to wait and see what Ronan felt like giving. 

Adam brushed his hair back from his face, looking out at the courtyard to the visitors below. His expression went—distant, was the best way to describe it, not quite the vacant gaze of his fortune telling, but removed. Detached. Ronan would’ve missed the change entirely if he hadn’t been watching Adam’s face, and it was disconcerting to see the amusement vanish so completely.

“It’s nice that you have something like that,” he said, arms folded defensively across his chest. “I don’t—well. My parents weren’t great, and my best friend’s dad vanished before she was even born, so. Not much of that sort of thing in my life.”

Something about the way Adam said they _weren’t great_ combined with his expression set off alarm bells. Ronan wondered to what extent they _weren’t great_. Given he barely knew Adam, the intensity of his anger should’ve been surprising. Then again, Ronan was self-aware enough to admit he never did anything by halves.

The feeling that he could trust Adam was back, too, and that _was_ surprising. It reminded him of the feeling he got when he was walking at the edge of Lindenmere—the promise of _more_. He wished, suddenly, that they weren’t thousands of miles away from his forest and the ley line. If they were there, maybe this would all be easier to understand.

“If you wanted to take a look at it,” Ronan said, knowing what he was offering, what it meant, what Adam would find if he looked too closely at the car. “Just let me know. I’ll take you for a drive.”

Adam looked back at him, that distant expression wiped away by genuine surprise. Like his smile, this too made him look younger, and it made Ronan’s heart beat a little faster in his chest.

“Well,” Adam said, slowly. “You know where to find me.”

He didn’t mean the Markets. Henrietta loomed in Ronan's memory. 

“Alright, time to go,” Declan’s voice interrupted before Ronan could say anything else, yet another addition to the list of ways Declan pissed him off. He’d said it loudly as he approached, which at least meant he probably hadn’t been near enough to overhear anything they’d said. Ronan didn’t want to have to lie about why he suddenly trusted a random psychic, since _instinct_ wasn’t exactly a convincing argument. Declan’s expression was pinched, but he had a small black bag in one hand, which meant the deal had gone off fine; the expression was for Ronan.

Adam kept his gaze on Ronan for a moment longer, before it slid over to Declan, carefully neutral. If Ronan hadn’t guessed—hoped, really—that Adam was just as interested as he was, the way his entire demeanor changed would have cemented it.

“Good timing. We were just finishing our conversation,” Adam said, all the recognizable Henrietta vowels chipped away to something plain, boring, forgettable. Declan, master of plain, boring, and forgettable, gave him a shrewd look. “It was nice seeing you again, Ronan.”

A completely innocuous sentence, except for the way Adam pressed two fingers against Ronan’s forearm as he said it, somehow warm even through the leather of his jacket. It felt like a promise.

Declan was silent the whole way out of the Market, and silent for another two blocks, as they made their way back in the direction of the small apartment they were renting for the weekend. It was only a matter of time before he made his opinions known, though, and Ronan was unsurprised, if annoyed, when he finally cracked.

“I know you don’t like psychics,” Declan said, voice low and fierce as they dodged various tourists. “And I know you know why _I_ don’t like them. So I’m curious what the _hell_ you think you’re doing?”

If he was honest, Ronan still didn’t know either. They hardly knew each other; their connection via hometown was tenuous at best; a pretty face shouldn’t have been enough to make Ronan second guess one of the very few rules he’d set for himself. But something about Adam just felt _right_ , like being behind the wheel of his car, like when he was dreaming. Ronan was certain he had too many missing pieces for the puzzle metaphor to really work, but there wasn’t another explanation that fit. He’d run away from that feeling in Kyoto. He didn’t think he really wanted to run anymore. At least not until he had more answers, one way or another. 

Still. Declan didn’t need to know the details.

“That,” Ronan said, as venomously as he could possibly manage, “is none of your fucking business.”

_Washington, D.C., United States of America (November)—_

He hadn’t told Declan his plans to attend the D.C. Market. This was tactical, and Ronan had a few reasons: the first being that they avoided this Market these days because it was too close to home and to Matthew, and the last being that he was there for a psychic. 

Declan would not have approved. Declan so rarely approved of anything Ronan did—this was not generally an issue, as Ronan did not generally care—but meeting a psychic for a reading felt a bit like crossing one of the very few lines he and Declan _did_ agree upon. It meant allowing someone to see the secrets the Lynch brothers had kept for so long that Ronan no longer knew who he was without them. His father, dreaming, Matthew, the Barns, his mother, his forests. Some days, Ronan felt like he was made up of nothing _but_ secrets. 

Adam was a secret now too. In another life, one without dreams or magic or the moldering remains of his father’s criminal enterprise, Adam might have been Ronan’s biggest secret. 

It was impossible to imagine that life, where his biggest secret was being a gay kid in rural Virginia. 

In the months since first seeing Adam, he’d never gotten a good look at how Adam did his work. Now he loitered by the door to Adam’s room, watching as he did quick readings for the gaggle of disreputable guests looking for their spiritual fix. This was not the typical tarot spread and interpretation Ronan had expected, given that quick glimpse back in Berlin. Instead of laying multiple cards carefully in front of the sitter, Adam simply spread the deck face down across the table, one hand hovering over each card in turn. His eyes were closed, pale eyebrows just slightly drawn together, concentrating. Something beyond Ronan’s comprehension made his hand stop above a card, and he flipped it over. His expression was perfectly serene, once again removed from age and time, delicately beautiful.

Ronan was desperately attracted to him.

“Nine of Wands,” Adam said, his voice soft and distant. He stared at the card, brown eyes unfocused, as if he were seeing into something—or somewhere—else. “You have been given a choice: to take the deal, or walk away. Do not take the deal. No matter the promised rewards. Betraying yourself is never worth it.”

He blinked, and looked up at the older man seated across the table, slowly returning to himself, to being _Adam_ rather than something more. And so it went, through each guest: shuffle, spread, flip a card. Ronan watched Adam’s hands, his face, the way he brushed back his hair after a particularly unpleasant reading, as the room slowly emptied of other people. Somehow, no one had entered the room behind Ronan, and as the last guest’s reading was finally complete (“Six of Pentacles: remember to give that cash in your wallet to someone who needs it, when you’re walking home later,”) Ronan found himself the only one left. 

Coincidence.

Adam looked up at him as Ronan sat down in the vacated seat, and Ronan was struck by the fact that this was the first time all evening Adam had made eye contact. His eyes were sharp but melancholy, and Ronan suppressed a shiver up his spine—what did Adam already know, and what would he learn?

“You don’t have to do this,” Adam said, clutching the cards tightly in his hands. Of course he already knew what Ronan was planning. They hadn’t talked about it, but between Ronan’s clear intent and Adam's psychic abilities, it wasn't hard to guess. “It’s different here. You feel different here, so close to…” He trailed off, but Ronan thought he knew what he wanted to say. Ronan’s dreams were always stronger and more dangerous, when he was near Lindenmere. The ley line, _his_ ley line, didn’t pass through D.C. directly, but it was close enough when compared to Berlin or Kyoto or London. Here was Ronan, whole; here was Ronan, honest.

“I want to,” Ronan said, by which he meant, _I want you to know_.

In the two months since they’d last spoken, Ronan had slept and dreamed and hiked through Lindenmere, and parked his car just on the outskirts of Henrietta more times than he cared to admit. He’d looked up the only psychics in town, from 300 Fox Way, and read through their embarrassingly ancient website. He’d learned a bit about what made Adam, and even with knowing the danger, he thought it was only fair Adam learned something about him in return. 

Adam let out a long, slow sigh, and began to shuffle the cards. 

When he finished, he knocked on the cards three times, and held them to his chest, eyes closed. Ronan watched him breathe in slowly, his eyebrows pinched together, before he flipped over the top three cards, laying them face up on the table. 

Eight of Pentacles. King of Swords. The Emperor. 

“Oh,” Adam said, so soft, Ronan barely heard it.

He almost spoke—a dismissive joke, maybe—but something in Adam’s face made him hold it back. The silence was heavy. Adam watched the cards, tracking the images as if he was seeing more in them than just smudgy watercolor illustrations; Ronan watched Adam.

Finally, without warning, Adam flipped over a fourth card.

The Magician.

“Well,” Adam said, tension bleeding out of his shoulders. He seemed resigned, or maybe relieved. Ronan couldn’t quite tell.

“Well?”

“In a normal reading, this would be past,” Adam touched the edge of the Eight of Pentacles with one finger, “present,” then the King of Swords, “and future.” His hand lingered on the Emperor, the final card. “Your potential. Who you are, who you might be. This is a positive spread, generally. Creative success, mentorship and support, a willingness to lead, to act.” Adam smiled, wry and strained, not a happy smile. “In a normal reading, I’d congratulate you.”

Ronan raised an eyebrow; the _but this isn’t a normal reading_ was unspoken, and terribly obvious.

“I’d rather not lie, though,” Adam said, voice soft again. He looked back down at the cards, conflicted. “That’s not what I see in these cards. Not for you.”

Nothing was ever simple, or easy, or normal. Not for Ronan. He’d been forced to accept this years ago, when he’d dreamed a clump of flowers in his hand, and finally put together all the strange pieces of his childhood. He’d known, when he sat down, that it would come to something like this.

“And what,” Ronan said, leaning forward to tap at the Magician, “is this?”

“If this is your card,” Adam replied, also leaning forward just a bit, sliding the Emperor card in Ronan’s direction. His gaze flicked up from the cards and back to Ronan’s face. “ _That_ is my card.”

It was as if all the air was sucked out of the room; Ronan couldn’t breathe for a moment, frozen, white noise in his ears. He didn’t know exactly what that meant, but he knew what he _wanted_ it to mean. Neither of them said anything for a moment, as Ronan processed everything as best he could. Finally, he took a deep breath and picked up Adam’s card, holding it upright.

Ronan smiled, just a bit. “You still up for a drive?”

_Singer’s Falls, Virginia (November)—_

Electronica filled the silence during the two hour drive, but it wasn’t an unpleasant silence. It was a silence full of potential, of unspoken wants, Ronan’s hand tight on the clutch, Adam’s eyes closed where he leaned back in his seat. The countryside stretched out into darkness around them, fewer and fewer cars on the road as they made it farther from the city. It was late—the Markets in the U.S., at least, always happened at night—and something about the time and the moon overhead and the beautiful boy in the seat next to him made everything feel a bit like a dream. 

Ronan was very good at dreaming. 

It was after two when they finally arrived at the Barns, Adam grimacing but not complaining as they passed through Ronan’s dreamed protections and crunched up the gravel drive. He parked by the plum tree, just as he always did, and looked over at Adam. 

No one but his brothers had been to the Barns in months; Gansey hadn’t been since last year. Now, as Adam stared out the window, Ronan wondered what it looked like to someone new. The flowers blooming bright and alive, no care for the seasons; the mismatched farmhouse, its cracked paint telling years worth of stories; the out of season lightning bugs that bumped into the windshield, not actually bugs but the _concept_ of them, plucked from Ronan’s mind on a good day. With the tarot cards, Adam might have learned about what Ronan was, but bringing him here showed Adam _who_ Ronan was. The enormity of that made Ronan suddenly second guess himself. 

“Adam?” he asked, many questions in one word, more hesitant than he’d have liked.

Adam looked away from the window, and then Ronan wasn’t second guessing himself anymore. Adam leaned over, his hand reaching out to rest against Ronan’s cheek as he pressed their lips together. Ronan felt it all the way to his fingertips, the buzzing want in his bones transforming into a need, frantic as his heartbeat. Adam’s hand slid to the back of his neck; Ronan’s moved from the clutch to Adam’s thigh, his other hand still tight on the wheel, anchoring him. They were so close. They weren’t close enough. It was an effort to pull away, to force himself to let Adam go. 

“We should talk,” Adam said, though he didn’t sound very convinced either. He slowly removed his hand from Ronan’s skin. Neither of them opened their car doors. 

Ronan wasn’t sure how he could be expected to focus on anything other than Adam. Even his own dreaming seemed unimportant when he had the promise of Adam in his home, in his bed. Still, he sat back, letting out a slow breath. When he looked over, one eyebrow raised, Adam hadn’t quite managed to recover his calm façade. His cheeks were tinged pink. Ronan grinned, and Adam returned it with a slightly exasperated smile. For now, at least, the moment of desperation had passed, though it lingered in the space between them, like music playing in another room. 

“You’ve seen inside my head,” Ronan said as they walked up the porch, keys jangling in hand, “but fair warning. Shit is weird.”

“Weirder than the car we just drove in?”

Ronan grinned again. His father’s car was the least of all the dreams housed on their property. 

The plant on the screened porch that grew snack food rather than flowers. A basket of strangely colored umbrellas giving off the distant sound of rain. Uncountable other small dreams, each a little wonder, a piece of Niall or Ronan or a combination of the two. And, of course, there was Chainsaw, crowing her disapproval at once again being left behind. But he couldn’t take her to the Markets—it was too dangerous, too close to the truth of him. She flew to his arm and pecked at the zipper of his jacket, searching for snacks as compensation for her distress. 

“You should be used to this by now,” he said, stroking the feathers on her neck. She allowed it for a moment before hopping up his arm to his shoulder, then to the other, where she could more clearly eye up Adam, head tilting at various weird bird angles. “Yeah, that’s Adam. Don’t be weird. This is Chainsaw,” he added, for Adam’s benefit. 

Adam held out his hand, and despite not finding any food there either, Chainsaw hopped over, her talons digging into the soft wool of Adam’s coat. Something tightened in Ronan’s chest as he watched the careful way Adam touched her beak, the top of her head, the curve of her wings—the way she let him, because Chainsaw, like all his dream things, loved everything Ronan loved. 

“The cards,” Ronan said. “You saw something in them, didn’t you?” He snapped a finger at Chainsaw, and she shot him a disdainful look but dutifully flapped over to the back of the sofa.

Adam sighed. They hadn’t taken off their coats or shoes, and Ronan still remembered the feeling of Adam’s mouth, but he knew with dreadful certainty that whatever Adam had Seen was important.

“Specifics are difficult, usually,” Adam said, leaning against the sofa, as if it was too much to hold himself upright on his own. “Futures are pasts are the present. Everything is tied together. My mentor told me, once, that time is like an ocean. It all flows together, but some parts of it are deeper, more difficult to reach.”

“Psychic bullshit,” Ronan said, not meanly, and Adam smiled a little. 

“You’re not wrong. But neither was she.” Adam shrugged. “I’m good at scrying. Seeing into those depths. The ley line likes me.” Ronan froze, and Adam clearly noticed, because he crossed his arms, folding in on himself, defensive. “So that’s why I picked up on things, now that we were close to—well, here. Because you’re tied to it too.”

He looked at Ronan, that melancholy expression back on his face; Ronan wanted to know, and he didn’t want to know, and he wanted to kiss Adam again. 

“It’s not that the reading I gave you was wrong, it’s just—there’s more to it,” Adam said. He paused, ran a hand through his hair. “God, I don’t even know how to say this.”

“Here, let me guess,” Ronan said, because really, it could only be about one thing. “You saw my dreams. You saw Lindenmere?” Adam nodded. “And you saw people coming for me.” Adam nodded again. “Same shit happened last year. That’s why I left, by the way.” Well, it was the other part of why he left, a fuller picture than the one he’d originally painted for Adam months ago. The only reason he’d stayed as long as he had was Gansey, and Gansey was always going to leave for college anyway, while Ronan stayed here, at the Barns, or the Markets, or his dreams. 

This time Adam shook his head, rubbed at his eye. “No these were—I don’t know who they were. Not people from the Markets. Not—they were normal, but they also _weren’t_ normal.” He frowned, thoughtful and slightly distant, the way he looked while scrying. “The person I saw, who’ll help you—he’ll know them. Know _of_ them. I think. It wasn’t clear. But I saw you, and your brothers, and… being hunted. Because of your dreams. I didn’t want to say anything at the Market in case they were…” He trailed off, but Ronan caught the implication. 

Silence stretched between them, Adam looking tired and sad, Ronan looking pinched and frustrated. There had always been an element of danger in his life, and as long as he worked with criminals there always would be. But this seemed more than that, something he couldn’t really imagine. _Being hunted_ seemed to carry connotations beyond just the standard desire for magical artifacts. 

“What about your card?” Ronan asked. “The Magician?”

Adam laughed, a soft, self-deprecating sound that nevertheless made Ronan’s stomach drop pleasantly. “Well, your reading didn’t seem complete,” he said. “And I didn’t really like what I saw.”

Ronan took a step closer and, when Adam didn’t dissuade him, reached out to put his hands on Adam’s waist. He felt so _real_ , an increasingly uncommon thing in Ronan’s life, and Ronan was gripped by how much he didn’t want to let Adam go.

“It means,” Adam said, looking up at Ronan from where he still leaned against the sofa. He unfolded his arms to grab at Ronan’s open jacket, keeping him close. “It means that I’m here to help. If you want me to be.”

Ronan looked down at Adam, at his serious, honest expression. He wanted to ask why Adam was doing this; if Adam felt the same _rightness_ between them; what Adam knew about Lindenmere. It occurred to Ronan that a psychic from Henrietta might know quite a bit about the magical forest on the outskirts of town. He wondered if Adam had ever found it on his own, with the ley line as his guide. He wondered if this was the reason he was so drawn to Adam, and he wondered if it even mattered.

This time, when they kissed, it was slow, cautious. It was Adam carefully reaching up to cup Ronan’s face. It was Ronan’s hands under Adam’s shirt just to feel the warmth of his skin.

Maybe it was selfish to accept Adam’s offer when they both knew danger lurked ahead. Certainly it was uncharted territory. Breaking his promise to his dad had been hard enough when it was his best friend—doing it for Adam would’ve been unthinkable, back when they’d first met. But now Ronan wasn’t so sure. Now, with the image of those cards in his mind and the ley line beneath his feet, he wondered if he was supposed to end up here all along. 

_Coincidence_ , he thought, his internal voice sounding eerily like Gansey, because it wasn’t. 

“You think I’d bring you here if I didn’t want that?” Ronan said, quiet, voice rough from the kiss and the honesty. 

Adam smiled. “Just making sure.”

Coats and shoes were abandoned next to the sofa, quickly followed by Ronan’s shirt. Chainsaw let out a displeased noise as they collapsed onto it, either at being dislodged or at officially losing Ronan’s attention. She flew over to her perch, passive-aggressively digging through the pile of junk she’d accumulated. Adam, straddling Ronan’s hips, looked vaguely contrite, which was both stupid and endearing, and Ronan distracted him by sliding two fingers just beneath the waistband of his pants. He felt Adam shiver, gratifyingly, and grinned even as Adam leaned back down to kiss him. 

Probably they should’ve gone upstairs, but Ronan felt like that was too far to go without his hands on Adam, now that he knew what he’d been missing. He traced a hand up Adam’s ribs, pushing up his shirt, tilting his chin up as Adam kissed down his neck. 

“I didn’t know you had a tattoo,” Adam said against his skin, fingers tracing the freckles dusting Ronan’s shoulders. “What is it?”

“Dreams,” Ronan said. “Well, originally it was real.”

Adam sat back so Ronan could sit up, twisting a bit. He forgot, sometimes, what it looked like. He’d go weeks without seeing anything but the clawed edges of it on his neck, and then suddenly he’d see it in a dream again. He’d dreamt the design, waking up with the sketch when he was sixteen and furious and heartbroken, when his dreams were more often nightmares. All he’d had done were the lines—he’d had to drive two towns over to get it done, and hadn’t had time for multiple sessions without Gansey and Declan getting suspicious too soon. With his back still angry red and wrapped in plastic, he’d dreamed again, and returned to the waking world with strange shifting ink on his skin. 

“It’s very you,” Adam said, exploring the curves of it. Ronan wondered what it looked like tonight: did Adam see the weapons, the knives and scythes and talons, or did he see the flowers, freshly bloomed and full of life?

“Check again tomorrow,” Ronan said, taking advantage of their upright position to tug Adam’s shirt off. He tossed it in the direction of the rest of their things, then slid his hands up Adam’s spine. He could still feel all the parts of his tattoo Adam had touched; if he wasn’t thinking too closely about it, he could almost feel, just at the edge of his awareness, the ink moving into new, strange configurations. He wondered what would be there in the morning. 

Adam wrapped his arms around Ronan’s shoulders, pulling them even closer together, and Ronan shifted his position so Adam was resting more fully in his lap. Urgency built again at the feeling of Adam through his jeans, and Ronan was briefly gripped by an irrational moment of panic—he didn’t really know what he was doing, what if Adam didn’t _like_ it—before Adam’s nails bit into the skin of his back, before Adam gasped against his mouth. He could feel Adam’s heart racing just as fast as his own. He didn’t want to stop touching Adam’s skin; he desperately needed to get Adam’s pants off. 

Adam laughed softly as they both struggled with buttons and zippers and tight jeans. They kissed until Ronan’s jaw was sore, and then kept kissing, Adam's hands mapping the geography of him as they laid on the sofa, curved against each other. Ronan watched Adam's face when Ronan touched him, the way he seemed almost surprised, the way he bit his lip, eyes squeezed shut. Ronan could pray at the altar of Adam's pleasure for the rest of his life.

“Tell me if—” Ronan said, barely recognizing his own voice. 

“Yes,” Adam said, face pressed against Ronan’s neck. Every place they were pressed together sent sparks up his nerves, too much and not enough. It was like a dream; it was _better_ than a dream. The reality of callused fingers and the way his leg was falling asleep and the cramp in his wrist. It meant Adam was _here_ , that Ronan wasn’t alone in his wanting, that a world outside his dreams still existed and Ronan had a place in it. Hopefully with Adam there too. 

Adam’s teeth scraped against the edge of his tattoo; Ronan’s fingers dug bruises into Adam’s hip; Adam kissed him again as they shuddered against each other, falling to pieces in a sparkling constellation of emotions. A new configuration made up of them, together, instead of them, apart. 

They didn’t say anything for a moment, still pressed together, out of breath. If it wasn’t for the pins and needles crawling up his leg, Ronan wouldn’t have moved at all. As it was, he only moved enough so they were both laying on their sides, Adam’s arm draped lazily over his waist. In this moment, the future seemed impossibly distant and unimportant. 

Ronan dozed, and didn’t dream, and when he woke up it was to the feeling of Adam’s fingers moving lightly across his face. When he cracked open one eye, frowning a little, Adam was smiling, bright and happy.

“I like your freckles,” Adam said, his voice soft. He moved his hand and leaned in to kiss a spot above Ronan’s eye, his nose, his lips. Ronan kissed him back, shifting to press Adam into the sofa, suddenly very much wishing they’d made it upstairs to bed. 

“I like your face,” he said, resting their foreheads together, pleased when he was rewarded with a laugh. 

“I think you should come over to Fox Way,” Adam said, a twist in his expression showing he knew what Ronan would think about that. “The cards weren’t clear enough—I need help to see more.”

“Ugh.” Ronan did not like the idea of more psychics. This specific psychic was more than enough.

“Ronan,” Adam said, knowingly, his hands coming up to frame Ronan’s face. “I just found you. I want to make sure I can keep you.”

Ronan scowled to hide the way his entire chest seized up; Adam’s melancholy smile returned, and he tugged Ronan back down for a soft kiss. 

“Fine,” Ronan said, weak, so fucking weak. “I’ll text my brother and—some other people, too.” Declan needed the warning, the time to figure out how best to protect Matthew. He wondered how fast Gansey would get on a plane, if Ronan asked. Well, hopefully there wasn’t a test coming up in one of his classes. “You should—we should go to Lindenmere too. Before that.”

Adam closed his eyes, and for a moment Ronan could feel the way Adam was connected to the ley line, the way it was connected to both of them. Somewhere in the distance he could feel his forest, too, a constant presence in his soul. The scent of rain on leaves drifted past, stone and moss and green things, comforting in its familiarity. 

“First thing in the morning,” Adam said, then nudged at Ronan until he sat up. “Bed first. This isn’t big enough for us.”

Ronan grabbed his phone from his jacket before they went upstairs, Adam carrying a bundle of his clothes and the bag of tarot cards. The wood floor creaked beneath them, Chainsaw hopping along after, eager not to be left behind. Most of the doors were still closed up—his parents’ room, Declan’s room—but Ronan didn’t explain, and Adam didn’t ask. Possibly Ronan didn’t have to explain, but at some point he thought he might want to. 

Adam lazily folded his clothes and left them on Ronan’s old desk before collapsing next to Ronan in bed. He draped his arm across Ronan’s waist again, curling up beside him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. Ronan dropped his phone on his nightstand, a reminder for when he woke up, and wrapped an arm around Adam’s shoulders. 

“Thank you for sharing this with me,” Adam said, nearly a whisper, making a small gesture to indicate the house around them, or Ronan’s secrets, or maybe just Ronan himself. Ronan lifted Adam’s hand to his mouth, pressed a kiss of his own against the palm, the knuckles, the delicate veins on the inside of his wrist. 

“Tomorrow,” he mumbled against Adam’s skin, thinking of Lindenmere, and his dreams, and what Adam being a part of this might mean for the future. “Wait to thank me until tomorrow.”


End file.
